{"id":2377,"date":"2023-02-23T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2023-02-23T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tpchealth.com\/apprenticeships\/?p=2377"},"modified":"2023-02-23T10:00:11","modified_gmt":"2023-02-23T10:00:11","slug":"questions-to-ask-when-looking-for-a-health-coaching-training-provider","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tpchealth.com\/apprenticeships\/blog\/2023\/02\/23\/questions-to-ask-when-looking-for-a-health-coaching-training-provider\/","title":{"rendered":"The questions to ask when you\u2019re looking for a health coaching training provider"},"content":{"rendered":"

First published on 28th September 2021, updated February 2023.<\/p>\n

Need a health coaching training provider?\u00a0Dr Andrew McDowell<\/a> has some key suggestions to help you make the right choice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s start with what might look to be a really obvious question: aren\u2019t all coaching trainers the same? It may sound obvious, but the answer is critical, particularly in the area of health and wellbeing coaching. Because while it may require and use some of the same skillsets as wider business coaching, it\u2019s the way that these skills need to be applied that really matter \u2013 and make the crucial difference. For it to be fully effective, health coaching trainers really need to have a clinical or lived experience to enable them to help you \u2013 the trainee \u2013 to understand how those techniques can be used in a real life health or social care context. There is, after all, an awful lot more at stake as a health and wellbeing coach if you don\u2019t get it right.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Why understanding matters <\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

In <\/span>coaching within a clinical or social care setting, there are far more elements at play compared with coaching within a business organisation. For this reason, a health coach trainer really needs to have a deep understanding of the complexities of the clinical and social landscape. Only then can they impart the necessary learning to a trainee health and wellbeing coach, which takes into account the pressures and difficulties faced on a daily basis. They need to know what it is like to manage risk, make tough decisions and cope with pressure. Equally important is an understanding of the courage, bravery and commitment it takes to work in health and social care, and the rewards this kind of work delivers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Only when you\u2019ve worked in this kind of environment yourself, and felt those pressures, will a coach really have the empathy needed to understand just how the people being coached feel and the unique pressures they face on a day-to-day basis. For example, as a health coach I work with people who find it really tough to negotiate all the complexities of life while also managing their own long-term health conditions. They operate from a place where they don\u2019t necessarily know the importance of managing and prioritising their own health. \u201cHealth\u201d, they often think, \u201cis something that happens to me. It\u2019s just too bad if I\u2019m sick myself.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Only a trainer who understands just what makes people feel like this, who is truly \u2018tuned in\u2019 to these ways of seeing the world, possesses the empathy and the delicacy of approach to coach and engage them successfully. Yes, there are many excellent executive coaches in the business world, but without the experience of coaching people for whom this type of outlook is not unique, then no amount of technique can overcome the very real life issues they will face. Unless they have the skills to engage their audience in a way which allows them to feel they can open up, disclose information and be honest about their experiences, in short to build both rapport and trust, things could go wrong very quickly.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Connecting with the disconnected <\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

Clinicians, health and wellbeing coaches, social prescribers, care coordinators, all these people undertake enormously difficult tasks. They are often working with people who feel completely disenfranchised and disconnected from their own communities, or who feel unable to change, or unable to access or have their health and care needs met appropriately. It takes great skill to work with those people and find out what truly matters to them.\u00a0 You can\u2019t just apply a single model or technique to \u201ccoach them better\u201d. It\u2019s much more about building rapport, developing trust, and the importance of understanding the circumstances people are in, appreciating how difficult it is to change and the social and cultural pressures to not change. We\u2019ve consistently seen evidence that the best people to train people to work in those areas have also worked in those situations themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve seen too many examples where the coach is far too directive, or insensitive to the complexity a person is experiencing. Where an intervention is designed around a system which the person being coached has to fit into. It should, of course, be the other way around. Rigid and directive approaches can often result in the person feeling much worse, reluctant to change, and feeling undervalued and unsupported. Only when you \u2018walk alongside someone\u2019 can a health coach have an appreciation of where the people they are coaching is coming from, and establish a therapeutic alliance to support them appropriately.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The questions to ask<\/b><\/span><\/h2>\n

So what, you may well ask, are the vital questions you need to ask any health coaching training organisation?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are some:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n